Hughes deflated after loss (AUDIO)

One of the best matches in recent times left Mark Hughes feeling no better at the City of Manchester Stadium as he watched his side throw away a two goal lead to Liverpool, aided by a disputable red card for Argentinian full back Pablo Zabaleta.

Stephen Ireland put the hosts in front before Javi Garrido doubled the lead, much to the delight of a packed house at Eastlands.

But Fernando Torres pulled one back early in the second half before Zabaleta received his marching orders. The Spaniard then netted his 4th goal in two games to pull things level before Dirk Kuyt turned in a deflected shot to send the travelling fans in to ecstasy.

Despite the manner of the defeat, especially after such a great first half performance, Hughes insists he'll take the positives.

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Yeah Oliverblue. City have felt the disappointment like this many times before. We just have to dust ourselves off and get on with it. First half we took the game to one of the best teams in Europe -- and were winning. But the self-proclaimed comeback kings were always going to make a fist of it in the second half. Going down to ten could have destroyed most teams in those circumstances. We were holding on and in the end we lost on the stroke of injury time. We fans can feel deflated by that, but I'm sure the team will take all the positives into training and come back stronger.

We left our first half performance in the dressing room at half time. For the first ten minutes of the second half we wandered round like lost souls and gave them the impetus they needed. MH has got to instil them into that high tempo is required for ninety minutes in EVERY game no matter who the opposition is.

we played much better than I thought we would......then the second half we seemed to drop back to how I expected us to play, which let Liverpool do what they do best......we desparately need a Gerrard type player in midfield who not only plays like him but keeps the other players going as well.....

The good thing is that we are now disappointed that we lost, before we would have said to ourselves it was Liverpool and excepted the loss as a norm. This time round, we didn't we were all gutted and this shows how much we have improved, I think we are still the top scorers in the league, this is a far cry from when we could not buy a goal last season and were desperate for a striker, now we need to sort out the defense.

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